Sandbox from scratch or other sandbox tools...where? How? What the...?

Did you open the Sandbox toolbar ?
View > Toolbars…
check Sandbox


There are some tutorials on terrain in the Tutorials forum category, like:

You can also do a forum searches:
[url]Search results for 'Sandbox[/url]' - SketchUp Community
[url]Search results for 'terrain[/url]' - SketchUp Community
[url]Search results for 'topo[/url]' - SketchUp Community